A Necessary Evil
by Igenlode Wordsmith
Summary: The one thing he could find to be glad about in the whole humiliating evening was that he had set Edith free. But good resolutions are hard to keep...


**A Necessary Evil**

The light from a hundred candles glimmered back from glass and silverware and lay softly across the starched white linen of the men and the silks and jewels of the ladies present, and where it fell it glowed with the gilded wealth of a gilded age. There was more money on display here than he or his family had touched in years, even before Papa—

Thomas cut off that thought almost before it had begun, closing it down as he had learned to close his eyes to all memories that led in the direction of his parents. Across the table his sister Lucille sat poised and calm, her smiling society mask a flawless shield over the bitterness beneath. Silent amid the dinner-table chatter, Thomas watched her, remembering that cheek with its exquisite curve bent over the blackened porridge-pot at home or flushed with heat as she thrust the kettle on its chain across the fire. His hand found the great garnet ring — the ring that was to have made their fortunes tonight — where it still lay concealed in his pocket, and tightened about it until it hurt.

She deserved better. She deserved what the other women at this table had, women like glittering high-nosed Eunice McMichael who had never had to lay hand to a hot skillet in her life. Lovely Lucille deserved better than to be enslaved to a decaying house that was slipping away from them year by year, no matter how he tried... but tonight was the night that should have set an end to that, one last push to revive their livelihood and save their home, and instead the moment had been cut short in humiliation and the threat of exposure.

There had been a time, a hundred years ago, when it was the Sharpes of Allerdale Hall who paid off fortune-hunters. The cheque in Lucille's reticule — not enough, it was never enough, but all the same a sum sufficient to represent an insult — conveyed the full force of the contempt with which they were regarded here. The moment had been ripe to ask Edith Cushing to marry him. Edith herself, shy, stubborn, inkstained Edith, had been ripe. And he, Sir Thomas Sharpe, Baronet, had allowed her father to bribe him to stay away from her.

It was not as if they'd had a choice. Lucille, calm and collected, only her eyes blazing in her white face, had taken the cheque. And the damning evidence of his London marriage lines — with _Miss Pamela Upton, spinster_ — had lain there in the dossier in black and white.

He tried not to think of Pamela when they were at Allerdale. He tried not to think of any of them any more. But he could have played out the grieving widower for Edith's father if he'd known... had known that Cushing _knew_.

Only Cushing had set an enquiry agent on them to gather evidence, and there was no evidence that Pamela was gone. Evidence that would damn him in eyes far beyond those of the girl he wanted and of her father; evidence that would lead him to a quick death and Lucille to a long lingering end, for what they had done and what they were.

He could not let them take Lucille. Not ever, not again.

And so he'd let Cushing think him a scoundrel and worse, because the truth could not be spoken or thought about, not even between themselves. Cushing had laid down conditions, and there had been nothing that they could do. No doubt the big American would wax expansive in future at his club: _just a couple of British adventurers... You can bet I sent them packing — there's no flies on Carter Cushing..._

"Carter by name and carter by nature," Lucille had said scornfully, after that first failed investment meeting, when Thomas had had to come to her with the news. "As proud of his plain speaking as of his rough hands — and fool enough to confuse both with merit."

But Cushing had been no fool. And he loved his Edith as Papa had never cared for either of them.

Oh, why would they not _listen_ , these men with their fat purses and their precious possessions? If they had only listened in London when all he sought was financial backing, Lucille need never have come up with her plan and he need never have smiled back at lonely, frail Pamela Upton or answered the pathetic appeal in her eyes... The mines could be made to pay again, he was sure of it. He had not asked for charity, not in London or Edinburgh or Milan. He had asked only for the same hearing they would have given any sound business proposition, and every time they had turned him away as a dilettante peddling castles in the sky. And what had followed was on their hands as much as his.

He had tried. Again and again, he had tried. Men like Cushing who looked down on him did not know the unforgiveable depths of what he had done — but did they suppose he took any pride in selling himself and his name, when it was all he had left... or that Lucille would have endured such a travesty of her own free will if he had had any other way of giving her hope?

Carter Cushing had never trusted him, not from the first. And now he sat silent at Cushing's table with the man's ultimatum wedged in his throat, trying not to meet Edith's eyes.

There was a shy, eager little smile in her face whenever her gaze sought his, and her father was watching them both. Dinner had never seemed more interminable, nor innocence harder to bear. When Cushing as host finally rose to his feet and rang his fork against a glass for attention, for once Thomas was genuinely grateful to the man.

He had not expected to be called upon to address the assembled company. But it seemed Sir Thomas and Lucille Sharpe were to be given the grace to concoct their own polite fiction to cover an enforced departure — an open scandal, after all, would never do.

Just at the present moment Thomas could not honestly say that he would greatly miss either America or the Americans. All the same, he stood with a smile to make his excuses, affirming the necessary falsehoods with the charming heartfelt ease of a lifetime he seemed to have spent in doing little else. Urgent affairs in England — regret — everlasting appreciation and warmth — and all the time he could see the colour draining from Edith's small stricken face. He had lied to her against his will so often before, in things that mattered and those that did not, but this time... this time, she knew it for untruth.

Even so it was not enough. He had to hurt her worse now, if he could. Cushing had paid him to leave... and to ensure he tore himself out of her heart in a way that she would never forgive.

Lucille's cool eyes were on him, waiting for his move. She at least had never seen Edith as anything but a necessary evil to save face and fortune for them both in the eyes of the world; the sooner the girl was done with, the happier she would be.

As children they'd been locked for punishment in the old linen-cupboard by the stairs. He could still feel the fierce comfort of her arms shielding a small Thomas from the dark, and remember the crack of their mother's cane across her thin back. The two of them had had so very little beside one another, and Lucille had shared with him as he grew everything that she had and everything that she was. She was the one person who had loved him, always, without question or judgement, and the only one to believe in his talents and his dreams. She had been his confederate, his confessor, his consolation, and the controlling spirit in all that they had done.

Edith thought herself in love with him. But she did not know him across the years as Lucille did. All Edith knew was the fairytale he had given her.

 _Love of me won't break your heart, sweet Edith, not truly. I'm hurting you now with falsehoods, but truth is the only thing that cannot be forgiven. And the truth is that writing means more to you than I do... and that even there you are too fresh and innocent to know anything of love._

It would be easy enough to spin some tale of betrayal and tell Edith that he preferred, say, Eunice McMichael with her sophistication and her London polish and poise. He thought he could even bring her to believe it — poor little Cinderella, she still set too little value on her own charms. But that would not shatter her world as he had been ordered to shatter it.

He had to wound her far more deeply, and in a place where she thought herself secure. Reluctantly, Thomas knew just where he would have to drive the blade.

She had talent with her pen: real talent that had caught his attention on the day that they first met. He'd learned long since of the lovely flush of colour that rose beneath her fair skin in response to praise of her work, and thereafter made a point of giving her the appreciation she deserved.

If he told her now the unvarnished truth — that the strand of romance she'd tried to add in for crowd-pleasing appeal was lifeless, cardboard stuff, cribbed from cheap novels by a girl whose own inexperience showed in every word — she would never be able to endure his presence again. And Carter Cushing's price would be amply paid.

Cushing's big hand had dropped to grip his daughter's shoulder where she sat, whether in warning or in comfort Thomas did not know. A moment later, quivering lips pressed tight, she had twisted free and fled the room. Thomas took a deep breath and followed, to do what had to be done.

It was not the scene he'd planned to play out with Edith tonight. _Forgive me, Edith. But your father has your best interests at heart — more so than he knows. You should never have become involved with Thomas Sharpe. Never._

Love was not a gossamer schoolgirl confection. It sank deep into you and held you fast through death and through desire with a drowning force. It burned and betrayed and led into torment those whom it bound. Love could drive men to things that were monstrous to contemplate. Edith Cushing knew nothing of that power as yet, and heaven forbid she should.

He caught up with her at the foot of the stairs, though the little lost look of dignity in her face pleaded with him to let her be. Forcing the truth down her gullet hurt more than he had thought it would, but he could not afford to spare either of them. He was doing her a mercy, though she did not know it. She would learn and grow with time. In the end, she would write better than before, write books that would never have come to pass in his clutches, and he... he would be sunken yet deeper into infamy than he was now.

The other guests were gathering. Cushing would not avoid a scandal after all; so much the worse for him. As for Edith, she would never know just what an escape she had had. No doubt in time she would turn to Dr Alan McMichael, the faithful swain who had been waiting for her all along...

But it was not the accusation in the eyes of the young doctor, foremost among the crowd, that stayed with him afterwards into the dark watches of the night. It was that last glimpse of Edith Cushing, who had struck him and fled; Edith Cushing, whom he had told himself — told Lucille — he was courting for her money in cold blood, whom he could not, should not love without worse horrors for them both.

~o~

Sleep came to him late, and heavily. He was wakened by Lucille's hot breath against his own, and the urgency of her hands.

It was broad daylight and not safe; he tried to turn away, but she was feverish, insistent, and he had never been able to refuse her. He yielded, with a gasp. Presently there was nothing but Lucille, and oblivion.

It was not until afterwards that he saw the bloodstains amid the discarded clothes and on her black gloves. But he'd known somehow, on some level, all along. Death excited Lucille. It always had, right from the start.

He did not want to know, but he must. "Lucille, who—"

Sated now, she stretched cat-like and settled against him, hair spilling across his arm.

"Mr Carter Everett Cushing"—her voice was creamy and slow—"will not insult us again. I shall leave on the first train, as agreed. And you, dear brother, can take Edith... just as we planned."

"I—" The chill of realisation was still spreading, joined now by a stab of nausea. He had renounced her. He had not meant for this to happen. "I— no. No."

"What do you mean, No?" Lucille's tone sharpened and she sat up abruptly. "It was you who wanted Edith. I tried to tell you she was unsuitable, but you insisted. Well, now she's perfect. She's an orphan. She's rich. She has no close family left. Play your cards right, and it'll be you she turns to for comfort: your arm she clings to, your hand outstretched to whisk her away from tragedy and into a new life far from here. Maidens in distress are your speciality, Thomas... or had you forgotten?"

She laughed and reached across to stroke his cheek as she had done when they were children, the reassuring big sister once more. Thomas bit his lip and was silent, watching her dress quickly and neatly, ready to slip back to her own room. She'd gone out in man's clothes before, but they could not afford for these discarded garments to be seen or linked to her in any way. He would have to find some means to dispose of them later, once she had left...

Their world had begun to settle imperceptibly back onto its old axis, almost without his willing it: she first to take the initiative, he in loyal support. Above all, they protected one another.

Cushing was dead. But Cushing had disliked him on sight, and Edith's father or not, he had not greatly cared for Cushing either.

Cushing was dead and gone, and Lucille must be protected. And Lucille had offered him Edith.

No. No. He shied away from that temptation again almost violently, with a resolution that ebbed even as he sought to bolster it up. The one thing worthwhile about last night, the one thing in which he could take a shred of pride out of all that he had done to her, was that Edith was safe.

She would not be safe with Lucille. She would not be safe at Allerdale Hall. She would not be safe at all from the moment her name appeared on the marriage certificate next to that of Thomas Sharpe...

But the vision swam before him, seductive in its colours. She would be alone now, young and unmarried in New York State, where well-bred society looked askance at inky fingers and fanciful tales in place of a wedding ring. How long could her stolid young doctor save her from the spite of his own sister, Eunice, and her set?

She did not love the faithful Dr McMichael. Not any more; not yet. Thomas knew with a painful clarity that for all the wounds he had dealt her yesterday, he could have Edith back if he lifted one finger to call. The truth about last night would do it... or almost the truth. He had only to confess her father's bribe and his own penury, avow regret and eternal constancy, and he could have her for the taking. If he wanted her.

Honey-fair Edith, with her quick intelligence and her stubborn streak, her innocence and her dreams; he knew now that he wanted her in his life with an entirely selfish urgency, to warm his cold hearth with optimism and unclouded affection and to lift the shadows with her brightness. He could picture the tenderness of her within his arm, clinging close for comfort, as Lucille had said — and why should he not comfort her? He had not caused her father's death, he had not willed it or wanted it, but the very least he could do was help make things easier for her amid the devastation that must follow.

He could take care of her in the days to come; shield her from the worst of whatever had been done. He could be her world, for a while.

Beyond that... he would find a way, he told himself, eyes closed firmly to the past. She was not like the others. She was stubborn and determined, like Lucille; she was a dreamer and a maker like himself. She held the best of them both.

The machine was so very close to being finished, and once that was done they would no longer be in need of money. Edith could be the last, and all this could be over.

It need not change anything for Lucille. Surely she would see that? All he had to do was follow the path she had marked out for him, as always, and let things take their course. Once he got Edith back to England it would all work out.

The door closed softly behind his sister. Thomas slipped out of bed, and padded barefoot across the room to the writing-table where Edith's manuscript still lay, packaged for its return. Drawing up pen and paper he began to write, fluently and without pause, not allowing himself to consider what he was doing.

At the back of his mind, voices shrieked of madness and a red clay vat. But life was short and happiness briefer yet, and he paid no heed.


End file.
